Bobby Hurst: Prescription drug prices are hurting North Carolina families
I am a former Fayetteville City Councilman and a lifetime business owner with firsthand experience navigating high prescription drug costs.
As a representative group of American voters recently indicated, there is a strong national consensus that prescription drug prices are too high and that Big Pharma is to blame. Data shows that 64% of Americans feel the prices they pay are unfair, and more than half struggle to afford their medications. Furthermore, 67% of voters feel "taken advantage of" by an industry that charges Americans more than three times what consumers in other developed nations pay for the exact same brand-name medications. My son has an inhaler for his asthma and plays lacrosse, which requires a lot of running. He has 2, one at home and one in his sports bag. The refill cost for the inhaler prescription is very expensive.
The data behind these concerns is alarming. The median annual list price for new drugs has nearly doubled since 2021, reaching $370,000 in 2024. Between January 2022 and January 2023 alone, Big Pharma raised prices on more than 4,200 drugs, with many hikes outpacing inflation. This is a really big deal for North Carolinians.
Despite these profits, the industry spends tens of millions of dollars annually on lobbying and advocacy groups to obscure the fact that manufacturers set and control these prices. While President Trump’s Most Favored Nation (MFN) Executive Order was a promising step toward aligning U.S. prices with the lowest rates paid abroad, Congress must now codify this policy into law. Additionally, we must examine the role of direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising, which accounts for $9 billion in annual spending and often promotes more expensive, less effective treatments.
The American people are calling for change. We need commonsense reforms to the pharmaceutical industry to ensure that U.S. patients are no longer charged out-of-control prices while the rest of the world receives a discount.
Bobby Hurst
